Thorwald Proll
is a writer and was active in the German student movement

German student movement

The German student movement was a protest movement that took place during the late 1960s in West Germany. It was largely a reaction against the perceived authoritarianism and hypocrisy of the German government and other Western governments, and the poor living conditions of students...

 in the 1960s.

On 2 April 1968, along with Andreas Baader

Andreas Baader

Andreas Bernd Baader was one of the first leaders of the German left-wing militant organization Red Army Faction, also commonly known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang.- Life :...

, Horst Söhnlein

Horst Söhnlein

Horst Söhnlein is a German activist and former member of the Baader-Meinhof Group who was convicted of arson in 1968.On 2 April 1968, along with Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Thorwald Proll, he set fire to two department stores in Frankfurt as a protest against "the genocide in Vietnam"...

 and Gudrun Ensslin

Gudrun Ensslin

Gudrun Ensslin was a founder of the German militant group Red Army Faction . After becoming involved with co-founder Andreas Baader, Ensslin was influential in the politicization of Baader's voluntaristic anarchistic beliefs. Ensslin was perhaps the intellectual head of the RAF...

, he set fire to two department stores in Frankfurt

Frankfurt

Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...

 as a protest against the Vietnam War

Vietnam War

The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...

. All four were arrested two days later.

All four of the defendants were convicted of arson and endangering human life and were sentenced to three years in prison. In June 1969, they were temporarily paroled under an amnesty

Amnesty

Amnesty is a legislative or executive act by which a state restores those who may have been guilty of an offense against it to the positions of innocent people, without changing the laws defining the offense. It includes more than pardon, in as much as it obliterates all legal remembrance of the...

 for political prisoner

Political prisoner

According to the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, a political prisoner is ‘someone who is in prison because they have opposed or criticized the government of their own country’....

s, but in November of that year, the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) ordered that they return to custody. Horst Söhnlein complied with the order; Thorwald Proll and the others went underground and made their way to France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

, where they stayed for a time in a house owned by prominent French journalist and revolutionary, Régis Debray

Régis Debray

Jules Régis Debray is a French intellectual, journalist, government official and professor. He is known for his theorization of mediology, a critical theory of the long-term transmission of cultural meaning in human society; and for having fought in 1967 with Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara in...

.

Thorwald Proll's sister, Astrid

Astrid Proll

Astrid Huberta Isolde Marie Luise Hildegard Proll was an early member of the Baader-Meinhof Gang.-As a Baader-Meinhof member:...

, was introduced to the group by him. She joined Baader, Ensslin and others in forming the Red Army Faction

Red Army Faction

The radicalized were, like many in the New Left, influenced by:* Sociological developments, pressure within the educational system in and outside Europe and the U.S...

. However, Thorwald Proll turned away from the group and in December left Paris for England.

On 21 November 1970, he turned himself in to the public prosecutor's office in Berlin. In October 1971, he was released early from prison.

After the release from custody Proll worked as, amongst other things, as a waiter, salesman and a lecturer.

Since 1978, Thorwald Proll has lived in Hamburg

Hamburg

-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

as a poet, author and a bookseller.